Become a Fan

June 08, 2008

The Problem With TypePad's New Compose Window Is That It Sucks*

It's number one: Something is terribly wrong in the blog world, and if I write about it maybe the folks at TypePad who are ruining the blogging experience will do something about it. Or at least I'll get more pageviews.

A couple of weeks ago they rolled out a new Compose Window, as they like to call it. I beta-tested the new feature earlier in the year, and it was so buggy that after a couple of posts I demanded to be un-beta-ed. (And as I just discovered, when I try to access those posts now, I get this. Damn you TypePad to Hell!)

Then with no warning it reappeared, complete with all the same bugs. It's so sluggish in FireFox you could make popcorn in the time it takes for a line of text to show up after you've typed it. So I switched to Safari, and encountered a new bunch of problems.

See those spaces between the paragraphs? They used to be slim, neat, aesthetically in keeping with most online text paragraph spaces. Now they're fat and ugly, despite my best efforts to HTML them into shape.

Posting photos, which used to take a mere few clicks of the mouse, is now a laborious process which involves customizing each image insert. Default settings don't save, no matter how many times I click "save these default settings."

And when I do manage to post a photo, suddenly I can't select a line of text and make it bold—that "B" button becomes unresponsive—thus, no bold captions unless I manually HTML it. (Long time readers will be aware that I don't understand HTML. At all.) And sometimes there's a line underneath my photo. Why? I have no need, as the British say, to "draw a line under it". I prefer bold captions.

This is just the minor stuff. Try cutting and pasting, from either Word or another webpage. Ouch! I've seen high school yearbooks that looked better. No more 13-point Ariel. But trying to select and edit lines of text is impossible. It's easier to retype. (Scratch that—I'm not gonna retype. I just won't post it, Damn you TypePad to Hell.)

There are other bugs: My categories reverted to all those generic categories TypePad provides you with: Games, Music, Sports (have you ever seen a sports-related post here? Not. Gonna. Happen.).

In a post I made for another blog I maintain, I tried cutting and pasting from Word, only using the HTML mode as they suggested when they answered my Help ticket. I ended up with a bunch of question mark symbols after every line. Yeah. My thoughts exactly.

I'm not the onlyonewho'sangry. And in the spirit of "Being Upset" you'll see that I've linked (which is now a three-step process) to other users who are upset too.

But hey, at least I found a bunch of great new blogs to read.

*Because I got so many new readers when I titled this post similarly. Consider this a place where you feel comfortable ranting. DYTPTH=Damn You TypePad To Hell.

Comments

It's number one: Something is terribly wrong in the blog world, and if I write about it maybe the folks at TypePad who are ruining the blogging experience will do something about it. Or at least I'll get more pageviews.

A couple of weeks ago they rolled out a new Compose Window, as they like to call it. I beta-tested the new feature earlier in the year, and it was so buggy that after a couple of posts I demanded to be un-beta-ed. (And as I just discovered, when I try to access those posts now, I get this. Damn you TypePad to Hell!)

Then with no warning it reappeared, complete with all the same bugs. It's so sluggish in FireFox you could make popcorn in the time it takes for a line of text to show up after you've typed it. So I switched to Safari, and encountered a new bunch of problems.

See those spaces between the paragraphs? They used to be slim, neat, aesthetically in keeping with most online text paragraph spaces. Now they're fat and ugly, despite my best efforts to HTML them into shape.

Posting photos, which used to take a mere few clicks of the mouse, is now a laborious process which involves customizing each image insert. Default settings don't save, no matter how many times I click "save these default settings."

And when I do manage to post a photo, suddenly I can't select a line of text and make it bold—that "B" button becomes unresponsive—thus, no bold captions unless I manually HTML it. (Long time readers will be aware that I don't understand HTML. At all.) And sometimes there's a line underneath my photo. Why? I have no need, as the British say, to "draw a line under it". I prefer bold captions.

This is just the minor stuff. Try cutting and pasting, from either Word or another webpage. Ouch! I've seen high school yearbooks that looked better. No more 13-point Ariel. But trying to select and edit lines of text is impossible. It's easier to retype. (Scratch that—I'm not gonna retype. I just won't post it, Damn you TypePad to Hell.)

There are other bugs: My categories reverted to all those generic categories TypePad provides you with: Games, Music, Sports (have you ever seen a sports-related post here? Not. Gonna. Happen.).

In a post I made for another blog I maintain, I tried cutting and pasting from Word, only using the HTML mode as they suggested when they answered my Help ticket. I ended up with a bunch of question mark symbols after every line. Yeah. My thoughts exactly.

I'm not the onlyonewho'sangry. And in the spirit of "Being Upset" you'll see that I've linked (which is now a three-step process) to other users who are upset too.

But hey, at least I found a bunch of great new blogs to read.

*Because I got so many new readers when I titled this post similarly. Consider this a place where you feel comfortable ranting. DYTPTH=Damn You TypePad To Hell.